


don't stop (color on the walls)

by impossible_rat_babies



Category: Fallen Hero Series - Malin Rydén
Genre: Character Study, Graphic Description, Mild Gore, Other, POV Third Person, sidestep can be a little bit of a disaster (as a treat)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-17 04:42:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29836194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/impossible_rat_babies/pseuds/impossible_rat_babies
Summary: step makes a quick pit stop at some podunk gas station after their second escape and finds a ride south...and makes an unexpected friend along the way.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 9





	don't stop (color on the walls)

It’s a clear night out tonight, the sky an endless dome stretching miles and miles overhead out into deep inky blackness bespectacled by freckled stars. 

Pollux blows a stream of smoke out of his mouth and it drifts up and up until it dissipates and he wonders if any particles of the smoke will reach that impossibly high ceiling. If they’ll touch moon perched on the roof, staring down at him with her grey blue light. 

He glances down at his hands, still bandaged and aching, lit instead by the fluorescence and the red and green neon glow from the gas station behind him. His shadow stretching long and narrow, falling across the desert dirt towards the dusty two lane highway disappearing out west. He breathes out again, the chill of the dry desert air stings in his nose when he takes a deep breath. It still hurts his lungs and his lips are broken and chapped, the wind sharp against his skin and he scratches the side of his face, sand and dirt rubbing off on his hand. He’s already got a fine layer of sand and dust under his clothes and it itches, but it’s better than what he came from.

The stolen sweatshirt itches and smells like cheap booze and sweat, the oversized sweat pants tied off as tightly as he can manage, but they still need coaxing to stay up. He looks back out east, across the desert and a shiver runs down his back staring into the darkness of those looming hills. It’s been days now, he can feel it in his joints, his aching muscles and in the caffeine shakes making his leg bounce, paranoia sharp as a knife when he hasn’t slept in three days.

If they were going to come after him, they would have by now.

Or maybe they were still busy cleaning up the mess he left behind. He picks at the dark lines wedged under his fingernails, flicking away the dried blood and dirt.

He’d cleaned the worst of the viscera off at the first abandoned house in some podunk hundred and fifty person town--a quick bucket and hose bath to scrub away the worst of it. Patched the worst of the hurts with a stolen first aid kit and cheap vodka to calm the shakes and practiced hands make quick work. He’d scrubbed raw and shuffled away the memories of what he had done too, letting them scab over and scar. Days later and miles away and there’s no regret in his actions—nothing he hasn’t done before.

Fool you once, shame on me, fool you twice, shame on you. A lesson they all learned too late and Pollux quickly rubs goosebump sticky arms.

Thoughts best left for later and he takes another long drag of his cigarette before he drops it to the ground and kicks some dirt over it. He needs to find actual shoes, his feet numb with scraps and burns from desert. He turns back to the gas station, the sad looking thing still clinging to life from a threadbare wire linking it to the rest of the chain which traces the narrow highway. A pulse, a guiding light to the south. Las Vegas and then west further still, down through what highways remain to the ocean—to the city that lies at those ruined shores.

There’s a few truckers packing up their things, shuffling around their big rigs and filling up at the meager pumps for the inevitable long days ahead of them. Pollux had picked one out earlier—an older woman heading just the direction he needed. 

She’d seen him inside earlier, moving through the aisles of candy and assorted snacks, poking at the chips and sneakily sticking packages of fruit snacks in the pockets of his sweatshirt when the attendant wasn’t looking too hard. She had saddled up next to him, taking the package of chips he had been reaching for and tucked them under her arm, hand held out expectantly. Her eyes drifting down to the drooping pocket of his sweatshirt with a pointed frown. 

He’d almost panicked, dropped everything and disappeared back into the desert--he could find his own way South. He’d done it before. But...there was no intent to rat him out, only give him a chance to not get caught. Give him a chance to mess this up; care about him a little.

Maybe that’s what made it easy, taking what was in his pockets out and passing them off to her one by one like some kid coughing up the candy they’d stolen from the jar and shoved in their cheeks.

He’d stood beside her like some poor lost child, eyeing everything around them while she checked out. Tucking an energy drink or two under her arm before she’d passed him his own meager bag with yet another look and a quick, thick southern drawl of a thank you for the attendant.

He fusses with the plastic handle of the snacks digging into his hand, peeling the wrapper from off the one of two packages of cigarettes she had added on his meager hoard of snacks. A little way to sweeten the pot for his honesty, he had easily picked up from her casual mind. 

She was kindly enough to offer a helping hand, but knowing enough to not get curious--her assumptions secure. Ironic how little work he has to do sometimes when people will fill in the gaps of what they want to see: just a poor runaway with nothing to his name, looking to head south to the coast. Disappear into the big city and be nothing--be a nobody.

He clambers up into the passenger seat, dumping his bagged snacks on the middle seat and it smells like cigarette smoke and cheaply made new care smell trees—half a dozen of them dangle from the rear view mirror. A lanyard hangs alongside them with small polaroids clipped to the key ring. Children, he’s guessing: grown daughter out east, living in up in New York—at some big architect firm and there’s a touch of pride in all those memories. A high school aged son back home, deep in the bowels of Los Diablos. He doesn’t care to poke more, settling deeper into the passenger seat once she too hops in.

He tucks his aching, stinging feet under him and cranes his neck to look out the window, watching a she slowly gets the big rigged turned around and headed off down the highway. The truck lurches and protests with the shifting of the gears, but it gets up to speed and the telephone poles and electric wires fly by, disappearing into the dark once the headlights hit them and pass on by. He counts their movement by the dip and rise of the wires from one pole to the next, the light from the moon too weak to keep pace.

Pollux cranes his neck up to look up at the moon and the scattering of stars this late at night, the buzz of the radio nothing but warm static against his ears. The heat of the vents blasting him in the face and still he looks out the window, wondering what it would be like to fall from the surface of that domed ceiling where the moon makes her home. If there would be anything left to salvage after that catastrophe, hitting the earth at terminal velocity. He would be nothing but a splatter, a crater in the wet sticky mud, utterly obliterated and there’s no coming back from that.

He thought it would be like that after the gun--after the window, nothing left to rebuild. But there was--they did. Dragged him kicking and screaming back with a tube shoved down his throat and white hot lights above an operating table. A new hip, knee and shoulder and spine--a persistent ache and he runs his thumb across the puckered scar near his shoulder. He winces, closing his eyes.

“Hey sugar, you okay?”

A deep breath and he yanks his head up, the driver giving him a long look out of the corner of her eye, cigarette dangling from her lips.

“You look like shit, darling. Go ahead and have a smoke.” She plucks the pack from the cup holder and urges him to take it.

“Thanks...” Pollux mumbles, pulling a cigarette from the package and he quickly sparks it up, sucking in a long breath. The nicotine settles the shakes and he rests back against the seat, head rolling to look out the drivers side window.

“You heading to Los Diablos?” She asks, testing the waters it feels like--getting a read on him.

“Yeah...”

“Got a place to stay when you get there? Someone to look out for you?” She looks over at Pollux again and he nods. Generous, wanting to look out for him--knows a thing or two about runaways. He’s not the first to sit in her passenger seat on this long drive; maybe the worst looking out of all of them. He pulls the hood up on his sweatshirt just a bit, running his fingers over his smooth scalp.

“Yeah, I got a plan when I get there. I’ve been there before--ran away there before.” He purses his lips, a little honesty creeping through. Just to sell it a bit more, give her the right impression.

“Didn’t stick around then, eh?” 

Pollux snorts and shakes his head, cracking the window to let a bit of the smoke out.

“Wanted to stay. But...wasn’t as good at hiding as I thought.”

Hiding in plain sight sure. Should’ve actually hidden, laid low, been a nobody. Carved out a life watching the Rangers on television screens in ancient electronic store windows and listen to them on half broken radios in homeless camps huddled in a sleeping bag. But he just had to stick his nose out--seen some poor chump harassing people in an alleyway, steps one, two, and three to take him down and it was all downhill from the moment his fist made contact. Sure he saved those people from a stolen wallet and some stitches, but then he did it again. And once more after that, and again.

It was just about the rush at first--like the first cigarette in the morning--the consuming way violence felt when deprived of it for so long. Unable to lash out, fists curling in excuses to crack his fingers.

It burned at first, the need to destroy--to wreck and scream and screech and tear out his growing hair all because he could. Or maybe it was like being drunk, high off the power and ability to let go. Let himself destroy a little, grin a little too wide and laugh a bit too loud. He isn’t proud of those first few months, taking down back alley slum lords and drug kings, high off the thrill of being able to do something to people that hurt him. Left a lot of bloodied messes--killed a few people in the rush. 

Not like it changed anything.

Not like he still doesn’t feel that need. Escaping the Farm was just the means to an end and whomever got in the way, got in the way. He’s still nursing a steady ache deep at the base of his neck and his temples, the strain of Numbers and the dampeners almost too much. Clumsy, inefficient--only breaking their brains like a toddler on a rage induced temper tantrum breaks their toys.

Some of them might recover, brains only half turned off, or only a mild seizure to stall their progress. Others won’t. Brains squeezed until they ruptured, seizures enough to hemorrhage, hands breaking windpipes, necks twisted until they cracked. Indulging in the need to destroy, letting his fingernails dig into faces, dig into eyes and oh how easy it was to scoop and pluck them out. Tongues and throats too--the body so soft and pliant like the mind.

Laughing and laughing himself silly while they screamed and begged and there’s no mercy left between his fingers.

“Well...” She speaks up, cutting through his thoughts and she’s back to looking at the dark road in front of them. Swallowing hard, she continues: “whatever was causing you pain where you came from, it’s good you’re not there anymore. No one deserves that...” So resolute and he’s too tired to laugh. Throat still sore.

“If you need a place to stay, or anything like that...I got a spare bedroom at home you can stay at. Long as you need. Maybe a spare pair of shoes, too.”

She wants to help, wants to help so badly and there’s more too it. Little girl, running away from home herself so many years ago--there’s mirrors upon mirrors decorating her thoughts, reflections of the past and the present and he draws his shields up tighter, bundling them around himself to block her out.

“Thank you...” He replies softly, still undecided but her caring...it’s a bit clumsy, a bit messy and tangled, but it’s genuine and its better than most.

She nods, returning her attention to the road.

The radio is turned up, some song he doesn’t recognize fading out into some late night news commentary. Tensions growing tighter overseas, the economy still hiccuping and sputtering with trade deals still on hold in Los Diablos. Some new villain upstart handedly taken in by the Rangers, cutting to some official press debriefing with Steel’s voice laced with carefully scripted professionalism.

Years ago and it was a different voice, a very different man behind the speaker and he was just some poor kid standing stock straight among the rest of the Rangers, hands tucked into fists behind his back.

No more press conferences with blinding camera lights and too many thoughts roaring in his ears. No more sleeping under bridges, no more tiny radios clutched to his chest. No more rules, no more what those old days represent, the voices coming through the radio--the familiar names talking about anniversaries of six and four years past.

“It’ll be a long ways to Los Diablos, so get some sleep. You look like you need it, sugar.” She adds on and Pollux nods rather than argues, letting the cigarette hang between his feet, ash dripping off the end and onto the floor mat between long drags.

The cigarette burns down to the butt, the heat uncomfortable against his skin but it too dies as the embers burn out. There’s nothing but a stub left and he discards it amongst the others crowding the cup holder, one lost amongst the many. He scrunches the hood up tight, tucking his hands into his sleeves. Letting the rocking and lurching of the truck steadily take over his senses.

Five hours--just a little longer on these first few steps and then he’ll be home.

**Author's Note:**

> I dunno i just wanted to write a fun little character study + thinking about step escaping the farm again. they can have a little going feral. as a treat.
> 
> find me on tumblr @ impossible-rat-babies!


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